What breed was your best broody?

[SlimJimothy]

One of my hens hatched and is raising chicks for the first time and I much prefer it over hand rearing. It's nice to watch them run around the yard and hop on top of their mom. And of course not having to worry about flock introductions and providing for them past food is convenient. What breed of bird was/is your best broody, one that went broody often, with a high hatch rate and competence at motherhood?

 

[HollowOfWisps]

My Orpingtons out of my larger breeds and my D’Uccles for bantam breeds.

 

[SourRoses]

Our hens that are half English Orpington are our best moms. We have one raising 13 chicks right now with her own mom, an Ameraucana. The Am is a good mom and very watchful for predators. But she tends to have a tough-love parenting approach where she'll just go to bed and expect the chicks to come to her.
The half Orp gets up and shows the babies the way back home. She spends more time feeding them and is more patient at stuff like being ridden like a pony and having her face "investigated". They are both really nice hens though, and tolerant of people messing with them.

Our runner-up best broody was a Genetic Hackle (Flytie) hen. She was very nurturing of her chicks and seemed like an old hand at it her first try, very smart. More aggressive towards people messing with her though.

Our very worst broody was a Cream Legbar (hatchery). She only bonded to her first few chicks, all the later hatches she wanted to kick out of the nest. She was picking on them so bad my mom had to intervene in the middle of the day, which resulted in Mom having an absolute brawl with the broody who kept stomping on the chicks as we tried to get her out of there. After a protracted battle, she suddenly gave up and flung herself out the open door she had resisted so hard, went back to her flock and never looked at the chicks twice after that. We may have been able to handle this better, but we didn't have the experience at the time.

Other broodies we've had included:
- Faverolle (hatchery) she was the unbreakable, permanent broody sort, but had some sort of temperature issues with incubating her eggs as they kept quitting.
- Speckled Sussex (hatchery) they all wanted to be broody often, but most were false starts that broke quickly. The one good sitter raised two batches of chicks for us. We had several odd incidents, like once a chick somehow got tangled in her neck feathers, and she was walking around with it dangling by its neck. I think she wasn't quite as maternally gifted.


I noted when breeds were from a hatchery because the bloodline can sometimes make more difference than the breed. If a breeder uses broodies to hatch, many of their progeny are going to be naturally selected towards good broody traits.
A hatchery on the other hand is going to select against broodiness by eliminating hens that aren't laying well.

 

[GirlsHuntToo]

My Light Brahma, Puff, was amazing!

 

[member 544621]

I have a Dominique that is very broody - I am going to have to cage her, I think. No mature Roos right now, so she'd be wasting her time sitting on eggs. Hopefully next spring she will get to hatch out a clutch.

 

[GlicksChicks]

My only broodies have been Black Copper Marans so far! I only let one raise chicks. She rejected 2 but kept 2. She raised them up well and let them be after 5 or 6 weeks.